Manufacturing plants or factories often utilize some form of planning system to prepare plans or schedules for the manufacturing process. A planning system can range from a manually prepared plan or schedule to a plan or schedule automatically generated by a software application operating on a computer system. One commercially available software application that operates as a planning system is RHYTHM.TM. MPPS available from i2 Technologies, Inc. of Dallas, Tex. A planning system operates to integrate orders for products, available raw materials, and needed parts from other vendors into a plan or schedule defining dates for production and shipment of products.
It is important to the operation of a factory that its plan be as efficient as possible despite the large number of variables involved. It is difficult for a planning system sufficiently to monitor all manufacturing variables, including such things as delays or shortages from vendors and equipment failures, to maintain the efficiency of the factory's plan. Conventional planning systems are unable efficiently to maintain a plan for a factory accurately reflecting all orders received from customers, the present state of raw materials and inventory and the parts available from other factories from which the factory receives parts.